Sailing Past Sandy's Surge

Cruise Sponsored by Harbor Group Keeps Focus on Issues Raised by Superstorm

By

Ralph Gardner Jr.

July 17, 2013 10:21 p.m. ET

Speaking only for myself, the All-Star Game at Citi Field wasn't the place to be Tuesday night. Taking a cruise around New York Harbor, and catching whatever little breeze was available, as I did, was where the smart money was.

ENLARGE

A view of the Manhattan skyline
Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal

ENLARGE

The Bayonne Bridge
Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal

But first a word about the All-Star Game and its emasculating power. I fear I'm not much of a man because I couldn't care less whether the American or National League wins. I realize it's cool having all the best players together in one place. But so what? I turned on the game when I got home from the boat ride and tried to pay attention, but found a conversation between my wife and daughter about boyfriends—my daughters'—far more engaging than whatever superstar happened to be grounding out to third at that moment.

But onto the cruise. This wasn't just any cruise. What appealed to me about it, to some limited extent, was its focus. Sponsored by the Working Harbor Committee, an organization dedicated to educating people about New York Harbor and its operation, the ride was called "Beyond Sandy: Keeping the Conversation Alive."

The boat, the Zephyr, a rather sleek, modern vessel, would be showing us areas affected by Sandy, while guest experts discussed ways to protect ourselves from the next superstorm's impact.

As interested in storm damage mitigation as I was, and debating Mayor Bloomberg's recent plan to better protect the city, the voyage's main allure was an escape from the current heat wave. Also, we'd be traveling off the beaten tourist track. For example, to beautiful Newark Bay.

I was also curious what kind of crowd such an adventure would attract. "A lot of water enthusiasts," suggested Philip Orton, an oceanographer at Stevens Institute of Technology, who came along for the ride, though he wasn't one of the speakers. "And some people who just wanted to go out on a boat and learn about Sandy."

That seemed to describe John and Amanda Gotto, a couple from Morristown, N.J., who said they were without power for 13 days after the storm. "We always had an interest in the working harbor aspect of things," Mr. Gotto explained as he raised his binoculars to watch kayakers along the Brooklyn shoreline. "The dates lined up."

Capt. John Doswell, the Working Harbor Committee's executive director, the evening's tour guide and moderator, and a man who seems to know New York Harbor as well as I do the way to the kitchen, also gave a shout-out to a group from the Women's City Club.

The crowd was predominantly middle-aged or above, though I did spy one or two couples, apparently swept up in the romance of ship travel and the setting sun, rather than storm-surge mitigation, who were cuddling. Well, actually only one couple.

I could relate to their recreational attitude. Indeed, my first priority was to score a Brooklyn Lager. I mostly mention my state of mind to indemnify myself in case one of the speakers complains that I misunderstood him and that he was talking about 10 foot, not 14 foot, surges and 1,000-, not 100-year storms.

We left from the South Street Seaport, which I haven't visited since Sandy, and is still suffering its effects, and traveled in the direction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Red Hook's container terminal off our port side. At least I think it was our port side. My wife, the sailor in the family, wasn't along for the ride and I was too timid to ask Capt. Doswell to orient me in front of an audience.

"Some of the boxes floated over to Governors Island," the captain said of Sandy, as he pointed at the stacked containers along the Brooklyn shoreline, "and ended up on land."

I was hoping we would head under the Verrazano-Narrows and out to sea; I suppose what I really wanted was a Hamptons vacation. Instead, we turned right (is that aft?), passed in front of Staten Island and a tugboat dry dock—if you love tugs, they're almost more impressive out of water—and then slipped into Kill Van Kull, which separates New York from New Jersey.

Mike Abrahams, the technical director for structures at Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering and construction firm, and one of the speakers, seemed to be making a pitch for flood gates, describing their $20 billion cost as modest. "We've already spent that on Hurricane Sandy," he said.

I like the idea of gates, if only because they're easy to visualize. But does anyone know if they've been tried elsewhere and worked? One of the passengers asked, "What about the water coming down the Hudson?" I suppose meaning: Where is all that water supposed to go if the gates are shut.

I'm not sure whether Mr. Abrahams had an answer (I might have been distracted by the Bayonne Bridge, which we were traveling under), but a couple of the other experts on board were skeptical about gates.

"The barriers would make the surge worse offshore," Mr. Orton contended. "It might protect some people and be worse for others."

William Haas, a senior policy adviser to Mayor Bloomberg's Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, the plan to bolster the city's defenses in the wake of Sandy, and another of the evening's speakers, agreed. "There's always someone on the outside," of the gate, he observed, pointing to the other side of the Verrazano-Narrows.

I asked Mr. Haas, with extreme storms and sea levels projected to increase in the coming years, doesn't all this amount to, excuse my English, "p— against the wind."

He laughed, which I took to signify a yes. "At some point, you can't climate-proof the city," he acknowledged. "We can protect against events to a certain level and respond much quicker. In Lower Manhattan, things were knocked out for months."

One of the ways is to coax the city's utilities and landlords to build more resilient buildings and infrastructure. "For much of Manhattan," he said, "it was a power issue, not water."

Perhaps my most uplifting conversation of the evening occurred with Alan Blumberg, another Stevens Institute marine expert. "When Sandy was coming we predicted pretty well," he said, referring to the institute's harbor monitoring equipment. "We check it every day continuously."

He directed me to their website—stevens.edu/maritimeforecast—which has lots of cool real-time information, regarding water temperature, currents, wave heights and much more. When US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson, he said, "we saved everybody because we knew which way the water was going. We knew where to put the ambulances."

Our trip ended with a crowd-pleasing turn past the Statue of Liberty and 1 World Trade Center, its glass facade glowing attractively in the gathering dusk. There were also announcements.

On Aug. 6, the Working Harbor Committee will host what Capt. Doswell described as a "dedicated Beyond Sandy tour." (I thought that's what this was.) And on the Sunday before Labor Day, the group sponsors its annual tugboat race up and down the Hudson.

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